Research Platform: Transformation

The PinchukArtCentre is pleased to present Research platform – an open platform for thinking, research and discourse that is accessible to all, which conjoins research, exhibition making and education. “Transformation” is the first exhibition in the framework of the “Collection”.

Press Release

Artists: Oleg Golosiy, Edouard Kolodiy, Oleksandr Roitburd, Vasyl Tsagolov, Illya Chichkan, Svitlana Martynchik & Ihor Stiopin, Institution of Unstable Thoughts (Oleksandr Hnylytskyi and Lesja Zajac)."Transformation" focuses on display of paintings mainly, which reflect transitional processes that took place in the contemporary Ukrainian art on the verge of change (late 1980s – early 2000s). The works presented on the exhibition show renovation of artistic language, which is associated with the transformation of the system of thinking, and reflect the transition "from one cultural phenomenon to another”. The possibility of interpreting, a play with the world history of art and culture, and metaphorical artistic language are the main features of the works presented on the exhibition.

Irony, playing relation to reality and perception of art as a game, which sometimes acquires transgressive forms (I. Chichkan), are determinant for the most of the works. Trying to create an absurd picture out of nothing, S. Martynchik and I. Styopin allude in their work to the picture of a French journalist and writer A. Allais "Negroes Fighting in a Tunnel by Night". Phantasmagoric half-fabricated half-cited works of O. Golosiy appeal to the viewer’s emotional perception, providing space for free interpretation.

The exhibition also shows artists’ attempt to go beyond a painting. Thus, the Institution of Unstable Thoughts (O. Hnylytskyi and L. Zajac) by means of simple visual illusions provides "analogue" animated picture that unfolds in real time and space in front of the audience. In the early 2000s V. Tsagolov returns to the format of the big picture, "introducing" in it his own performative experience of the 90s.